What I would do differently

Hello! First of all, I know some of you are having issues getting emails with posts from blogger’s feeds lately. From what I’ve read it’s an issue with Yahoo emails – they seem to be going to spam? So if you have Yahoo be sure to check that. Also, the feeds are still working, it’s the email that’s not. So if you want to get all the posts from your favorite bloggers, I suggest you subscribe to them all in one spot like Bloglovin. I used to bookmark all my blogs on my computer and now I love having them all in one place!

So last week I talked about the process of building our house ten years ago. Today I’m talking about what I would done differently when it comes to the finishes and upgrades and layout – all that good stuff.

First up – the things I love about our house! Well, there’s a lot more than this that I love, but these are certainly things I’m glad we did. One was upgrading the elevation, or the front of the house:

I fell in love with those shutters and the design, and when I saw this brick I was sold. I LOVE our brick. It’s just on the front – I wish we would have wrapped at least the bottom half of the house all the way around. Brick holds up better and feels safer to me.

I’m so glad we put in a basement – we got about $12K in free upgrades and used that towards the basement. If you have kids I don’t think it’s ever a bad idea if you have the option and the funds. If you don’t it’s still much needed storage, even unfinished.

I’m also glad we roughed in a bathroom down there:

Even if you won’t finish it off a potential buyer might. And adding plumbing after the fact is not cheap! The bottom line is, the way you live in your home changes so much through the years – space you don’t use early on may be space you are craving years down the road. And rooms you use a lot early on may not be needed as much later (a playroom for example).

We fell in love with this house because it was so open and there are good and bad aspects to that for sure. It’s not for everybody. Sound does carry. :) I was worried our heating and cooling bills would be awful but surprisingly we don’t pay any more than friends with less open houses. Well, maybe a little more in the summer, but the winter is fine.

If could do it again I would do the cathedral ceilings and open floor plan again – maybe just not quite as much in the house. Our foyer, living room, staircase, loft, bedroom and master bathroom all have the high ceilings:

I especially love it in the foyer, staircase and bedroom. Most of those came standard with our house plan. We stuck with the basic eight foot ceilings upstairs otherwise. (And as a side note, I’m so happy we did nine foot ceilings on the main floor!)

Here’s one I wish we had done more of – recessed lights! I love them and wish we would have put them everywhere:

We have them in the kitchen and over the fireplaces (and we installed them in the basement later) and I wish I would have placed them strategically all throughout the house. But I’m weird and I love a lot of light, especially in the winter.

OK. Now, the stuff I would have done differently! Some of it’s big, some small. A biggie is the thorn in my side – the corner fireplace:

I was all, “Oh, it will be COOL and DIFFERENT!” and it’s just ANNOYING and AWKWARD. I’ve made it work over the years but I’d still rather have it on a flat wall. Normal is good, trust me.

Here’s a small one – lights in the closets. All the closets! Linen, bathroom, storage:

Whatever it is. Put a light in it. Just do it.

Also, I’d have a light fixture installed in every room. We don’t have ceiling fixtures in two bedrooms, my office and the living room and I so wish we had them:

If anything have them roughed in and you can hang something you love later.

Our builder did connect light switches in each one of those rooms to an outlet, so we have lamps plugged into those. It’s convenient to walk in and flip a switch for light.

This next one is a biggie and it’s two-fold. Most homes you walk from the garage to the mud room/laundry to the kitchen, right? Ours is weird. We walk from the mud room, past the office, into the family room and then into the kitchen. I seriously sit and think of all of my friend's houses and ours is the only one I know of with that layout. It’s not ideal – especially when you’re bringing in load after load of groceries.

Another big thing is I would NEVER put my HVAC system so close to the family room again:

(Old pic of the mud room but it shows the utility closet.)

You don’t realize how loud it runs until you’re trying to watch TV. :) I love days when I don’t have to run it just because it’s so QUIET in our family room and kitchen. I would move it to the garage or a storage room in the basement in a heartbeat.

And I think it goes without saying if you’ve read this blog for a while – I would never have put the washer and dryer in this room again. Ever. It didn’t work for us. I would put it upstairs (in a tiled/waterproofed room) or in the basement. Or just away from the garage door where you dump all your stuff. :)

Both my husband and I agree – the biggest thing we would have changed would have been to bump out the back of the house, even a few feet. Not the entire house, just the family room and kitchen:

We added the bay window and I’m so glad we did! Otherwise we wouldn’t have much room to move by the table and pantry at all. We are actually thinking about adding more space back there someday but I don’t know if it will happen. It’s just something to think about – where you want more space to live. We have rooms like our dining room and loft that we hardly use and I hate that. I wish we had that space in the areas we use, like the kitchen.

Of course that one especially was realized as we lived in the house longer and longer. It was not something we even considered when looking at models and floor plans. And in general the way we all live has changed over the years – people don’t use formal spaces like they used to. It’s all about your family needs!

So that’s just an idea of what I would do again and I wish I would have done differently. All in all I’m pretty darn happy with what we ended up with. :)

Do you have any thoughts to add to this list? Lights in closets – am I right?? Yes.

Living room refresh

Good Monday to you! Hope you had a great weekend!

I’ve mentioned before that I LOVE when I get to move furniture around…because I never move it around. Our house has a very open floor plan and very little useable wall space (that isn’t covered by windows). So once I find a spot for something it stays…forever. Moving furniture is a rare treat. :)

I found this étagère at HomeGoods a couple years back and it was love at first sight. I loved the detail on the sides of it and the size – nice and skinny. It started out between the two windows in the living room, but that became too busy to me, so I moved it next to the sofa last year:

It was there for a long time, but the height right there bugged me. It was right where the dining and living rooms meet and it felt awkward. I don’t have a full shot to show what I mean. It wasn’t awful or anything, I just wasn’t feeling it.

I decided a few weeks ago to try it in the corner where this desk/console used to sit:

I wanted to use that desk in my office so the spot was freed up. I moved the bookcase over and loved it in that spot! And that of course started off a series of other small projects as well. It’s how I do. :)

When I installed the new window trim a couple weeks ago I started replacing the chair rail as well. I wanted something simpler that would sit flush against the window trim. And when I put the rail in years back I kind of cheated along that half wall behind the desk. Long story short the trim on the half wall didn’t meet up with the chair rail on the wall. So I removed all of it, including the top of the half wall, and installed all new:

Now the chair rail on that wall is one continuous piece of wood instead of two mismatched pieces. This would all make more sense if I had taken a before pic, but I forgot. :)

I got this new-to-me primer at Lowe’s when I was painting the window trim and so far I love it:

It gives the wood a great base and goes on really smooth. I finished off the new chair rail and the top of the half wall with caulk and two coats of semi gloss paint. I still have quite a bit of chair rail to replace but I’ll do that as the budget allows.

But the best part is that I think this piece has finally found it’s forever home!:

It’s much bigger than the desk was, but takes up less visual space for sure. I couldn't believe the difference. I love how open it feels now and that we can appreciate the pretty detail on the side!

I loved what I had on the wall above the desk so I moved that between the windows:

I’m not sure that will stay but I do like that the round mirrors break up all the rectangles in this spot – windows, wainscoting, bench and bookshelf.

OH! And I pulled the chair away from between the windows and I LOVE it. I hesitated to put the chairs on the rug (they don’t match but I’m working on that) -- I’ve liked having the floor more open. But WOW, what a difference it made to pull everything together – it really opens up this room. Love it. More pics soon!

I edited the contents of the shelves down a bit:

I’m not 100 percent on the bottom shelf, but I’m using what I have so I’ll deal. ;)

I’ve decided for now I’m not putting the drapes back up. I’m sure I’ll crave more color there eventually, but for now I’m loving how clean and simple it is. Speaking of color, I was looking back at photos and found this before that shows the étagère in it’s original spot and the old pinky walls:

Can you believe how pink they were in that light? Goodness. Anyway, here’s how it looks now, with new paint and trim: My little BFF is smooshing himself into this shot. :)

This room was on my list of spaces I wanted to rework this year and so far I’m really, really happy with how it’s coming together! It’s a two story space so it’s harder for me to figure out.

Do you move furniture around a lot? If so I’m jealous. It’s a free fix when you get the itch to tweak things around the house. :) Or do you keep things the way they are forever like me? I love using what you already have in a different space – it feels brand new when you move it around!

Spray paint blues

Hey hey! I have a little taste test for you today! OK, not taste – don’t eat the spray paint. But a comparison of sorts. I told you about the blue desk for my office earlier this week. The one that I didn’t like in it’s blue state, at least in that room. I actually did love it in a more saturated tone than it’s before color – sometimes I find a deeper color shows off the detail better.

One of you commented that the desk, that was supposed to be navy blue, looked more like cobalt blue (a brighter tone). I totally agree – I even noticed it when I was painting but was hoping it would look different out of the bright sunlight.

It didn’t. :) Totally cobalt.

OK, here’s the thing – at first I tried the same navy blue on it that I used on my bedroom lamps:

And it was SO bright. It didn’t look like the same color in the least. I ended up using a different blue that looked a lot more navy, but when I compared the two inside they look like entirely different colors.

So I did a little test – first off, to show that the color on the cap of a spray paint can will sometimes look different than what you get when you spray. Secondly, a color in one spray paint will be different in another. I also noticed a big difference in coverage when I did this as well. 

I grabbed five blues out of my stash to do this little test and used some primed scrap wood:

So if you looked at this and looked at my lamps, I’m guessing you’d say the middle one is the paint I used, right?

Even I was surprised. I had to look back at my lamp post to see which one I used, and it was actually the blue second from the right:

Who would’ve thunk it? Here’s the first thing I noticed when I did this -- I love the HUGE selection of colors that Krylon offers but the coverage isn’t great. I never really noticed till I did it right next to others but it sprays very thin and doesn’t cover nearly as well as the others.

I did two coats of each color and the Krylon colors dripped every time:

Due to it spraying so thin I think – it just didn’t cover well, at least compared to some others.

Here’s the other thing – the colors can look much different when you spray. The Stonewash Denim cap on the left has a blue gray tone to it but is straight gray when you spray it. It’s hard to tell in the pics because it actually matches the color of the cap better than some of the others. But I bought this a while back thinking it would have more of a blue tone like the cap and it doesn’t.

The Valspar on the right, called Deep Sea Diving, is another one that is different than the cap. The cap looks like more of a peacock blue color and it sprays a definite cobalt blue.

Here’s the other three close up – note that the one on the left and the one in the middle are both a glossy navy blue:

Can you believe the difference? At the risk of sounding like a Rustoleum commercial, it covered SO much better. (I did two coats of each color.) And to me it looks like a true navy blue, right? The Krylon in the middle is what I used on our lamps and I was actually quite surprised when I looked back and figured that out.

You can see where it dripped a ton too. It would take a good four coats to get good coverage on this white. But as I mentioned, I used it on our lamps and didn’t have any issues. And the navy blue on the lamps is a perfect navy to me, so it will just take more coats to get that true color.

But more coats means using more paint, so that’s something to consider. I used nearly two cans to do the desk and I imagine it would take double that to get good coverage with the Krylon.

The color on the end is one called Mountain View and I’ve used it on a few things over the years. The color on the cap is pretty true to the color. It’s a nice light blue that leans ever-so-slightly gray.

Here’s a close up of the board so you can see the coverage (I shook them all for a few minutes before spraying):

Again, as far as being true to the color on the cap, Rustoleum wins. Coverage-wise, Valspar and Rustoleum did well. But I’ve used the two Krylon colors at the bottom and had no complaints at the time – it was only when I sprayed next to others that I noticed how thin it sprays.

I know it’s impossible to match the color of the paint to the cap exactly, but many of the colors I’ve used are a pretty darn good match. What’s frustrating is if you get it home and spray and it’s not what you thought, you’re stuck with it. You can’t return it after you’ve used it. That’s how you build up a ridiculous spray paint collection. ;)

Do you have a brand of spray paint that you love? A color that is your go-to? Are you still afraid to spray? If so, check out this post for helpful tips!

Building a house

Hey all! It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood – hope your weather is finally coming around too!

Lately I’ve been talking a bit about a big anniversary that’s coming up next week – ten years this house! I’m pretty nostalgic about it. It means so much to me that we’ve been here for so long. I swear I’m getting the house a cupcake next Monday for the “birthday.”

Kidding. I’ll get myself a cupcake.

Now that we’ve lived here ten years I have new appreciation for the building process, so I wanted to pass my thoughts along. I’ve been wanting to write a post like this for years and I figured the ten year mark would be pretty appropriate. It’s a bit like labor – you forget all the bad stuff and only remember the good. Mostly.

Obviously you have to decide if building a house is for you. The idea of new and shiny everything is certainly a bonus – that is if you like new and shiny. :) If you prefer more character in a more established area then building a new home is probably not for you. (Unless you are going more custom.)

We loved the idea of starting from scratch and getting exactly what wanted. Honestly, we didn’t even look at any existing houses – we knew right away we wanted to build. There are good and bad aspects to the process of course.

The good:

You pick out all your finishes – every. little. thing.
You can schedule the build for when it works for you (we delayed ours for three months so we could get out of our apartment lease on time).
You pick your neighborhood and lot.
Everything is brand new (if you like that sort of thing).

The bad:

You pick out your finishes – every. little. thing. ;)
Your house won’t be ready for three to six months (more for custom). Ours took about five and a half months start to finish. (Eight and a half with the delay.) 
Building can be more expensive than buying if you don’t reign in all the extras.

Deciding on a builder is a biggie. For us it was more about the location and the house we fell in love with than the builder, honestly. We signed our contracts with Trinity Homes and then it was bought out by Beazer almost immediately:

We lucked out. We had nothing but excellent experiences with them the entire time. In the ten years since about half of the builders in our area have folded – Beazer seems to still be going strong.

If you’re like us you find your location before your builder – I think that happens a lot. But either way, as they say, location is everything. My advice to you is to not put too many boundaries on where you build. Of course you’ll have a certain area you’d like to put down roots and if you have kids you’ll be thinking about schools. But I had a very specific area in mind when we were looking and didn’t want to go outside of it. I actually drove out to our neighborhood once to go through the model – and turned around because it felt like it was SO FAR AWAY. (Drama.)

It was about one mile past the “boundary” I had in mind. Later we found our model in another city and realized it was built in this neighborhood. We drove it again and all the sudden it wasn’t so bad. :) Now we honestly couldn’t be more pleased with the location. It’s minutes from great shopping and restaurants but we drive by farmland to get to all of it. I love that.

The easiest part for us was finding our lot:

You’ll pay extra for more land, for a corner lot or for a tree lined backyard. We drove up one street and knew immediately this lot was the one we wanted. The backyard wasn’t big and it was sloped, but not as much as the others. All that mattered to us were the trees and the land behind the house. That land is why we won’t be moving any time soon – it’s just too hard to find anymore. That privacy is HUGE to us. A big backyard may be what is most important to you, it all depends on what you want for your family.

Right off the bat you’ll have to make BIG decisions. The structural stuff needs to be figured out immediately. That includes the elevation of the house (not the height like I always thought, but the design of the front of the home), how you want the kitchen set up (for us we had to decide on things like double wall ovens or a slide in), if you want fireplaces, a basement, all that big stuff: Although sometimes the structural stuff isn’t big and you would never even think of it. So my advice is, before you sign one document -- pour over magazines, pinterest, walk through model homes and do your research! We had no clue what we wanted when it came to most of it. I wish we would have done the double ovens in the kitchen. :)

The stress of this process came when we had to pick out all of the finishes for the house. Again – I don’t think you can plan too much for this part. And again, we did very little of that. You have a very short amount of time to pick out all the finishes for the inside of the house and if you aren’t ready it is extremely stressful. Stressful in a first world problems kind of a way but still stressful.

We had a couple scheduled times to walk through the showroom and decide on our options. This is for EVERYTHING – the great thing was that we had endless options for lighting, flooring, faucets, brick, all of it. That was the bad part too. It is incredibly overwhelming if you don’t have an idea of what you want going into it.

And even then you will sit down to make your final decisions and find out about all kinds of stuff you never thought of. At least we did. A sound system (we added), an irrigation system (we didn’t), a security system (we did). Lots of systems. I hadn’t even considered all of that until we had to make the 100 percent final decisions. Hence the reason I think building can be more expensive than buying outright. If you’re not careful you tend to think you must do ALL THE THINGS to your house right then, instead of spreading them out.

I’ll do a separate post about what we would have done differently, but overall I have a few more thoughts about the process to pass along. The biggest is to be there as often as you can. It goes fast! We had an Amish crew frame our house and where there was a hole, a house was built within days. I would drive out almost every single day after work. First of all -- it was incredibly exciting to watch. Secondly, I just wanted to stay on top of the process: 

Our superintendent was AWESOME and we were in constant communication. If something came up he would call and I’d be out there. A few times I noticed things as well – like that we were supposed to have a gas oven and dryer and only electric was installed. (I noticed it before drywall so it wasn’t a big deal to fix it.)

Don’t be afraid to ask for small changes along the way! At least with our builder we were able to tweak throughout the process. Little things like not having a half wall installed in our front room weren’t a big deal for them to adjust, and our super would often ask along the way what we thought. I was so thankful they were open to it. I don’t know if all builders would but it never hurts to ask.

When you’re visiting all the time, be sure to take photos! I took them every time something big happened – framing, electrical, drywall:

That fireplace is now this one:

:)

I’ve referenced our build photos many times in ten years. I looked back at pics to see if I remembered right about the wood on our stairs before I decided to rip off the carpet:

There are some changes I’d like to make to the kitchen and when I looked at the framing photos I realized there’s a huge plumbing pipe running right through a wall I’d like to change up. Drats. But it’s MUCH easier to study photos than it is to cut out drywall.

And finally, when you’re picking out all the goodies for your home – keep in mind what’s easy to change out yourself. When you buy a fancy sink through the builder it costs more than just buying it yourself (the bonus is that you’re paying for the sink over 30 years). ;)

So my advice is to go builder basic on things like light fixtures (at least ones you can reach to change out), faucets and hardware. (Or see if they will install items you bought instead!) Even a novice DIYer can change out a door knob and I promise switching out lights is not hard. Of course this depends on the time you have to dedicate to this stuff – if changing all that out seems like torture it will be worth it to just pay for what you want!

That’s the whole point, right? You’re building a home to your exact specifications. That’s the best part! That and the new house smell – I swear ours smelled new for years.

So those are my thoughts on building a house. There are definitely some things I’d do differently in our home and I’ll talk about those sometime soon. For us the process was pretty fantastic and other than some stress it was a fun experience. I would do it again for sure.

Have you gone through the building process? Did you enjoy it? Any other advice you would add?

Desk do over

Hello all! Hope your weekend and holiday was wonderful! Our Easter ended up being a lot more low key than we planned and it was great! My boy played outside pretty much all day long yesterday and it was fabulous – this is the weather we’ve been waiting for!

So the project I’m sharing today was frustrating – sometimes you put a lot of time into something and it ends up not working. Well, it may work great – but it just isn’t what you envisioned. It’ll make more sense in a bit. :)

I mentioned last week that I’d like a smaller desk in my office. We have a couple options in the house that I thought would work as a replacement – I tried the first and it was way too big (too long). The second was this small desk I got from HomeGoods years back:

In that spot it was mostly decorative – you can tell by the height of the chair that there wasn’t a lot of leg room there to sit. The desk was low and the middle section was in the way. I tried a couple different chairs and that one is actually the only one low enough for it – the desk just isn’t made to function I guess? (Which I didn’t realize till getting hit home and taking off all the tags, of course.) Weird.

So I pulled it into the office to see if I liked the size. It’s about half the width of my current table and I LOVED how it opened up the space. I actually placed it at an angle in the room and loved how it looked in there.

But as I mentioned, I couldn’t really sit at it. So I did some checking – first to see how much I would need to raise the desk to make it work for me. Then I looked at the legs closer and figured out that everything came off easily – the feet first, then the cross bars:

Then I was able to take the legs off as well. This was going so well! :)

I ran to the hardware store and grabbed a 2 1/2 by 2 1/2 board – when I got home I cut it down to size and installed it on the bottom of the desk:

Then I reinstalled these little doodads that the legs screwed into:

I was making a mess, as you can see. :)

So far so good – it was actually going fast and easy and I put the legs back on and the height was great!

Little issue. When I sit at my desk I rarely sit with two legs on the floor. I pull them up and tuck them under, or sit criss cross, whatever – I LOVE to have my legs up. Because of that I need extra space under the desk that normally wouldn’t be needed. My current table/desk works great because it has a small apron that doesn’t get in the way of my legs.

I tried sitting at the desk as it was but couldn’t handle not being able to pull my legs up. It’s my thing I guess. So…plan B happened. It got ugly before it got better:

I cut the middle section away with a jigsaw (it was just thin particle board) – not all the way back, but enough for my legs to be able to fit in. The photo above was a rough cut – I evened it all out and then used some small trim molding to cover up the rough edges.

It actually worked out great! I wanted to paint the desk anyway so these changes weren’t any big deal. The painting is where things went downhill. ;)

We took it outside so I could spray paint it – with all the detail on the legs and the grooves in the top I knew that would be the best option. I sanded it down lightly first, then spray primed it, then started painting the final color.

I loved my navy blue lamps in the master bedroom so much, I figured a navy blue desk would look great. My office is light but I thought having more of a statement in the desk would work.

It did not. :)

I didn’t even take pics of it in the room – we put it in there and I had to pull it back out immediately. HATED it. Don’t hate the desk, hate in in the room:

Did I mention I ran to the hardware store ten minutes before closing to get more spray paint cause I ran out? And then the color didn’t even work. GAH. (I wasn’t 100 percent sold on it outside in the sun but thought it would look different inside.)

And the spray paint covered really crappy. It can get a cloudy look if you don’t apply it just so – this was user error though. When you’re painting smaller projects this won’t happen as badly because it’s easier to get good coverage. With larger furniture it’s hard to get it just right.

Thing is, both the new height and the cut out turned out great, and I love how the changes look!:

The color is just all kinds of wrong. :) I actually like the navy on the desk, I just think it needs to be a deeper blue.

I’m determined to use it somewhere though – I have a couple spots in mind for it as is (I’ll touch up the uneven spray paint if it works). If I don’t like the blue I’ll be painting it, again. :)

One thing I’ve learned – I’ll need to stick with the table-as-desk idea, for the way I work…err, sit. I’ve been searching on Craigslist here and there for months and haven’t found anything that would work.

Something like this on a smaller scale would be ideal:

I’ve been thinking lately I could just DIY something, since the size I want is so specific:

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And then I came across this small table from IKEA:

It’s a little plain but only $40 and the perfect size. I think I’m leaning towards making something though. We will see!

All I know is the desk will NOT be navy blue. :) Live and learn. Most of the time I put into this project was spray painting – extending the legs only took about 30 minutes.

All in all not a complete waste, so I can’t be too bummed about it. For now I continue to sit at my gigantor table/desk in my office with my legs crossed. :)

Have you had any projects that didn’t turn out the way you envisioned? I happens to all of us at some point! Were you able to salvage it?

Fun Easter ideas

Hello and Good Friday to you! I hope you have a lovely weekend planned, whether it be activities with your family or just relaxing. :)

I had a cute Easter-themed project planned for this week but I just couldn’t get it done. Wah waaah. I know it’s down to the wire here but I thought these other Easter-themed projects and ideas were too cute not to share!

I am totally in love with the pretty colors of these naturally dyed eggs:

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I love ours as bright and as obnoxious as possible but these colors are so lovely! (And who knew red onion would make a green egg?)

We’re big Despicable Me fans in this house, so of course anything minion makes us smile:

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How CUTE are those? And totally easy to pull off too.

I pinned this the other day and didn’t end up digging the plastic eggs out in time…fail! My son will get this lunch next year for sure:

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One of my all time favorite tables settings I ever put together was this spring/Easter-themed one from a few years back:

I wrapped some plastic eggs in twine and yarn and nestled them in burlap – so easy.

The rest was just flowers stuck inside my Goodwill glass centerpiece:

This idea is absolutely gorgeous – I wonder if you could use fake eggs or if they would float too much:

Those are two of my favorite flowers – ranunculus and gerbera daisies! Isn’t that so pretty?

What do you make for Easter dinner? Our standard is Pioneer Woman’s prime rib:

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GOODness. It is delicious. I’m not a big cook by any stretch and I now make this for both Easter and Christmas (and sometimes Thanksgiving!) and it’s SO easy to do.

I thought this snack idea was so adorable!:

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I mean, come on. Dying. That is the cutest!

Do you have Easter plans? We’re going low key this year – just enjoying a weekend without a lot going on. We are planning to see Heaven is for Real and I’m bringing my tissues because I bawl at the trailer alone. :)

Hope you have a lovely, blessed weekend!

 

P.S. I have the pin it button installed on my photos but I ask you visit the sources and pin from there. :)